Vermont’s Fish & Wildlife Board is quietly rolling out a two-hearing blitz—August 24 in St. Johnsbury and August 27 in Bennington—to sell the public on “streamlining” bear seasons and slapping a tag requirement on an animal that, until now, has been managed more like a nuisance than a big-game trophy. On paper it sounds like housekeeping; in practice it’s another incremental step toward turning every hunt into a paperwork exercise that regulators can tighten or expand at will. The hybrid option for the first meeting is a nice touch for folks who can’t drive across the state, but it also lets the agency harvest comments from a wider audience without ever leaving the comfort of a Zoom screen—classic modern bureaucracy.

For the 2A community the stakes are bigger than black-bear bag limits. Every new tag, every consolidated season, every “biologically justified” restriction becomes precedent that can be ported to deer, moose, or eventually the gun you carry while hunting them. Vermont’s bear population is healthy, yet the Board is choosing this moment to add friction rather than liberalize opportunity; that tells you the default setting inside the agency is control, not conservation through abundance. Sportsmen who shrug and say “it’s just a tag” are ignoring how many Western states began with exactly the same language before layering on weapon restrictions, shorter seasons, and limited draw systems that treat hunters like applicants instead of stakeholders.

The practical takeaway is simple: show up, speak up, and make the record reflect that adding administrative hurdles without a documented population problem is not “modern management”—it’s mission creep. If the Board can’t articulate a measurable bear-overpopulation crisis that tags will solve, the 2A crowd should treat this as the opening move in a longer campaign to regulate access to the field itself.